Springfield currently has just 29 percent of the money it needs to keep its promises to current and future retirees. Measured in dollars, Springfield has an unfunded liability of $652.7 million, according to a 2012 annual report by the Public Employee Retirement Administration Commission.

The Pioneer Institute database gives new insight into what has been a perennial problem in Massachusetts – the funding of the state’s 105 public pension systems. The problem is particularly acute in Springfield, which has seen its unfunded liability grow steadily over the past decade.

The issue has particular resonance now due to Detroit’s recent bankruptcy. That city also had significant unfunded liabilities in its pension system. Whether those retirees will get more than pennies on the dollars which were promised to them is up to a bankruptcy court.

Anne Leduc, executive director of the Springfield Retirement Board, was asked if there is a chance that future Springfield retirees will not see their promised pension benefits. “If I could see in the future, I’d probably be laying on a beach right now,” Leduc responded. “I don’t think you’ll get a straight answer to that one.”

Under current projections, Springfield’s pension fund will be fully funded by 2037 – a date that puts the City of Homes in 15th from last among all of Massachusetts’s public pension funds.

But Springfield is not the only city with pension fund problems. Only one pension fund in the state is fully funded – the small Minuteman Regional School District in Lexington.

Twenty-five pensions are funded at less than 50 percent. Everett and Lawrence, the second and third lowest funded pension funds, are both funded at less than 40 percent.

“When one looks at the pension problem in Massachusetts, it’s clearly worse today than it was a decade ago,” said Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. “That’s a cause of great concern for the state and municipalities.”

All the pension funds were hurt by the 2008 stock market crash, Widmer said. The funds count on growth of about 8 percent a year from their investments, and anything that falls short of that increases the unfunded liability if the money is not made up by taxpayers.

Additionally, he said, legislation over the years has sweetened pensions, adding to the costs. People are also living longer.

Iliya Atanasov, the Pioneer Institute’s senior fellow on finance, who led the institute’s pension research, said cities like Springfield, Lawrence and New Bedford have had a more fundamental economic problem over the last couple of decades, since they lost their manufacturing bases.

“For a lot of these places, the pension issue is an integral part of general economic decline - falling housing prices, poor education. It’s the same kind of dynamic that we saw with Detroit,” Atanasov said.

A range of factors can contribute, Atanasov said, to a low-funded pension: annual cost of living increases given to employees, the number of employees a city has, small pension funds that do not have the capacity to make smart investment decisions, low employment rates and an ailing economy that limits the tax dollars available to pay these costs.

“There’s no one way in which this issue can be repaired,” Atanasov said. “We need to rein in management expenses, be more careful with payroll costs, find ways to boost the economy. We need to be sure the investments we make are wise.”

The conservative-leaning Pioneer Institute argued in a separate policy brief that consolidating administration of the state’s 105 pension systems would save up to $25 million annually in labor costs and stipends to board members, which could then be put toward the unfunded liabilities.

As of 2012, Springfield had around 3,200 employees and 2,700 retirees and paid an average retiree benefit of $21,300.

In Springfield, the investments made by the pension fund are controlled by the state. A 2007 state law requires the state pension fund to manage any public pension fund that does not meet certain investment standards. The goal was to help funds that do not have the same resources as the state to make investment decisions. Springfield’s fund has been invested with the state since 2005.

Springfield officials attribute the low funding ratio of the pension fund to market and economic conditions. “If you go over the last 10 to 15 years and the way the economy is, it added to the position that the Springfield retirement fund is in now,” Leduc said.

Springfield comptroller Patrick Burns, an ex-officio member of the retirement board, said the decline in funding is due to the 2008 stock market crash. The fund reported losing 28 percent of its value in 2008, the biggest drop in investment returns since 1985, the earliest date for which data available. “I think every pension system in the commonwealth was affected by the crash,” Burns said.

As the market has rebounded, the Springfield pension fund has improved its performance, gaining 13 to 14 percent in three of the last four years.

Burns could not explain why Springfield’s funding is still lower than others in the state. But, he said, the retirement board is addressing the problem by adopting a more aggressive funding schedule.

For fiscal year 2014, which started this month, the city paid $37.2 million into the pension system. Next year, it will increase that amount by 5 percent, with 6 percent increases every year thereafter. The new schedule, Burns said, will let the city fully fund its liability by 2037.

James Harrigan, a retired firefighter who was on the retirement board from 1996 to 2008, said the fund “took a huge hit” around 2000 due to market conditions. The stock market crashed in both 2000 and 2002, and the country went into recession. Harrigan said the Springfield retirement board fired some of its money managers around that time.

In addition, Harrigan said, the city was hurting financially for years and did not always put enough money into the pension system. “It was just a hard time to come up with money,” he said.